the Roman
curve. Dante was an exile: this man was at home--and would have been,
anywhere.

He was tall, slender and straight; he must have been sixty years old, but
the face in spite of its furrows was singularly handsome. Grave, yet not
depressed, it showed such feminine delicacy of feeling, such grace, such
high intellect, that I stood and gazed as I might at a statue in bronze.
But plain to see, he was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. The
face spake of one to whom might have come a great tribulation, and who by
accepting it had purchased redemption for all time from all the petty
troubles of earth.

"You must stay here as long as you wish, and you will come to our old
church again, I hope!" said the Father. He smiled, nodded his head and
started to leave me alone.

"Yes, yes, I'll come again--I'll come in the morning, for I want to talk
with you about Madame Guyon--she was married in this church they told
me--is that true?" I clutched a little. Here was a man I could not afford
to lose--one of the elect!

"Oh, yes; that was a long time ago, though. Are you interested in Madame
Guyon? I am glad--not to know Fenelon seems a misfortune. He used to
preach from that very pulpit, and Madame was baptized at that font and
confirmed here. I have pictures of them both; and I have their books--one
of the books is a first edition. Do you care for such things?"

When I was broke in London, in the Fall of Eighty-nine! Do I care for such
things? I can not recall what I said, but I remembered that this
brown-skinned priest with his liquid, black eyes, and the look of sorrow
on his handsome face, stood out before me like the picture of a saint.

I made an engagement to meet him the next morning, when he bethought him
of his promise to the old man of the cudgel and wooden shoes.

"Come now, then--come with me now. My house is just next door!"

And so we walked up the main aisle of the old church, around the altar
where Madame Guyon used to kneel, and by a crooked, little passageway
entered a house fully as old as the church. A woman who might have been as
old as the house was setting the table in a little dining-room. She looked
up at me through brass-rimmed spectacles, and without orders or any one
saying a word she whisked off the tablecloth, replaced it with a snowy,
clean one, and put on two plates instead of one. Then she brought in
toasted brown bread and tea, and a steaming dish of lentils, and
fresh-picked b